Best Laid Plans
by Taisi
Summary: "You don't have to pretend you love me to make me feel better." Mikey knew his brothers meant well. (Leo/Mikey, OT4, fluffy tcest.)


Mikey barely met their eyes, shying away like he couldn't bear to be touched by them, and Leo absolutely couldn't take it anymore.

He moved past Raph, nudged Donatello to one side, and cornered Mikey against the wall; framed his face with both hands, crowded close, gave him no room to escape unless he fought his way out.

"Enough," Leo said, though it came out a little strangled, and he refused to read into the widening of Mikey's eyes or the tremor crawling through his arms and shoulders, and kissed him.

Had always dreamed of this moment, Mikey warm and pliant and breathless against him; had always dreamed of taking it slow, taking special care, guiding him with real-life love into the newly intimate relationship that would always be incomplete until they were together in it, the way they were together in everything else.

Hadn't imagined it would be here, with hurt between them and tears dripping down Mikey's face. Leo could taste the salty slick of them, and pulled away- pictured chasing a stray tear from the corner of Mikey's mouth with his lips, used the pad of his thumb instead.

Donny and Raph's concern was practically its own presence in the room. _This was never the plan,_ he could hear them both in his head, could see their brows drawn tightly, faces twisted in despair even without looking back at them, _this is wrong, all wrong._

Well, yeah.

Mikey's hands came up between them, not to push away, but to barricade- like he was expecting a suckerpunch, like Leonardo was any of the number of people in the world Mikey had to defend against- and after a delicate pause, the most fragile hesitation Leo had ever seen, he opened his mouth to speak.

And Leo was ready for it. Braced for it, actually. Prepared, he liked to think, for whatever Mikey had to throw at him.

_How could you,_ or _This is so wrong,_ or _Get away from me._

But no force on earth could have prepared him for

"You don't have to pretend you love me to make me feel better."

It almost propelled Leo back a step, and as it was, he staggered. Mikey's hands slipped from his plastron like they'd never belonged there in the first place, and his blue eyes fell away.

"What are you talking about?" Donny said in a rush somewhere behind them, so frankly bewildered that Leo found room to ache for him, too. "Mikey, what..."

"You- you three love each other, but not- not me. And, I mean, I get it, you don't have to. Love me, I mean. I know you can't pick and choose that sorta thing. But it...it still..."

_Hurts,_ he didn't say, but it hung there in the air between them. A naked honesty, a shrinking sadness, and nothing in the history of the universe had ever gone as wrong as their stupid plan had.

_He thought we were leaving him out._

Leo tilted his face back up again, fingers gentle where they cupped his jaw, and wondered at how badly they'd failed him, that Mikey could really think them capable of something like that.

"We'd never do that to you," is what Leo said, all he could say. "You know we'd never hurt you."

Mikey was their baby- everyone knew that, _Mikey_ knew that. He was used to being made fun of and teased and sometimes underestimated, but more to the point, at the crux of it all, he was used to being taken care of. And it took a minute longer than it usually did, but then Mikey was leaning into Leo's hands- warming slowly to him, to that truth of the world, and looking up at him with thawing blue eyes.

Trust like his had the kind of strength that withstood storms and fire, and Leo was shaken at how close they'd come to breaking it.

"We didn't know if you- we didn't want to assume," he continued lamely. "We wanted to be sure. We didn't want to- "

"Leo?"

Helplessly, Leo fell silent, and tried not to let his heart break with hope when Mikey covered one of Leo's hands with one of his own.

"Were you waiting for me?"

It came out gently, kindly, nothing left but quiet bravery in his voice. Leo stared at him for a long moment and then sank forward; his head coming to rest against Mikey's, blue and orange meeting in the middle, his grip trembling.

_"Yes._ Mikey, yes."

He felt it when Mikey laughed, the barest ghost of breath against Leo's cheek, and they were close enough Leo almost felt the tentative smile that followed, too.

"Figures. You always wait for me."

And Leo kissed him.

Then thought of how close they had come to missing this, missing Mikey, messing this up and hurting him in a way they couldn't make better or fix, and he kissed him again, and again. A moment later Don and Raph were there- shameless in their need to give and take comfort in the physical, tactile way they'd adopted; Raph pressed his lips to Mikey's shoulder and neck and the curve of his jaw, and Don's fingers trailed up Mikey's arms, down the textured grooves in his carapace, across the soft cartilage above his waist.

They always waited for Mikey, that much was true. When he got distracted, or fell behind, or needed a guiding hand. But sometimes Mikey ran too far ahead; sometimes he climbed mountains and crossed countries before his brothers could take any one step after him, and sometimes Mikey had to stop and wait for them, too.

And as Mikey tilted his head and squirmed with glee at one of Raph's tender kisses on a sensitive part of his neck, delight blooming in the flush of his cheeks and the summer sky in his eyes, Leo decided that from now on, they'd go together, or not at all.


End file.
